An Open Letter to Dan Savage

Dear Dan,

May I call you Dan?  We have never met and it is probably presumptuous of me, but I have read so much of your writing and seen you interviewed so many times, Dan feels ok. 

So, I am writing because I am worried.  I know that you have an edge to your writing and speaking.  Its part of what I like about it.  You are unflinchingly honest and sometimes honesty has sharp corners.   That is a good thing.  However, there are sharp corners and then there are sharp corners.

The last year or so it seems like you are getting more and more pissed off and I think it is getting in the way.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I am pissed too. 

I am pissed that teenagers are dying and whole segments of our culture do nothing but give a halfhearted tisk-tisk and shake their heads and say how sad it is.  It is not sad it is heartrending and a stain on our whole society.

I am pissed that people in my own faith tradition have turned the gentlest thing in the world, the love of God for God’s children revealed in the Bible, into a weapon to bludgeon and cudgel rather than comfort and heal.

I am pissed that my government just doesn’t give a shit.  About anything.  Or anyone.  Unless of course they have loads of money and power.

So, I am pissed too.  And I understand the temptation to live into that pissed-off-ness.  I at least get to take a break from time to time.  As a public figure, you are out there in the mix of it 24/7.  But, Dan, that is why it is so important for you to not let the BS get the best of you. 

You have become a critical voice for something more than tolerance.  You have become a voice for the importance of active engagement and healing rather than just passively putting up with one another.  I have had more than one young person tell me how important watching or making an “It Gets Better” video was for them.  You really have made a difference.

So you can imagine how disappointing it was to see you speaking to a group of high school kids and, after a diatribe on the Bible (more on that in a minute), calling the kids who walked out pansy-ass.

Pansy-ass! 

Seriously?

It was like watching a really good guy morph on the screen into the bully he has been cutting down to size for the last couple of years!  How does making fun of them do anything but get a cheap laugh and deepen the divide between groups of already divided kids?

And worst of all, it was religious kids you said it to.  Like it or not, religion is a part of our culture.  And even as fast as our culture is secularizing, religion in general and Christianity specifically are not going anywhere soon.  Those kids you ridiculed are the next generation of people of faith. 

I am a pastor.  I work in a church in a rural Arkansas community.  In fact, you were here this week at the university.  It is a highly religious and very conservative place.  And I choose to do ministry here because I refuse to surrender the church in any place to a message of intolerance.  I, and many many more pastors and lay people like me, refuse to give up on the church because we believe it is an instrument of incredible good when we will allow it to be.  Those kids you made fun of are the next generation of leaders in the church.  I understand the temptation to just say go to hell.  I understand the temptation to belittle their beliefs and to dismiss the scriptures on which they rest those beliefs. 

It is tempting and it is easy, but what purpose does it serve?  What purpose is served if I belittle them the way they belittle me for my beliefs?

What was gained by calling those kids out?  Yeah, their beliefs are wrong and can become destructive.  So why harden them against hearing what you have to say?  What is gained by giving them a reason to tune you out?  To not see the error of their ways?

The way we stop the kind of biblical and ecclesiastical abuse that so many kids endure is to never give up preaching a word of truth, hope, love and inclusion. 

I’m not saying that you need to be a preacher.  I have no idea what your own personal faith is.  But I do know that if you are true to your ethic of tolerance, you will respect that there are some of us who still believe in that book you make fun of and we believe that it has something good and hopeful to say about how very much God loves each and every one of God’s children.

I can see how you probably get pissed off about the kind of treatment those kids showed and I understand the temptation to knock them down like tenpins.  It feels good in the moment but it really doesn’t serve any purpose. 

I think you are better than that.  In fact, based on some of the compassionate writing and risk-taking you have done on behalf of GLBTQ kids, I know you are better than that.  So, I hope that you will get back to doing what you do so well, speaking truth to power and standing up for the powerless.  Stay pissed off; just try not to let it get the better of you.

Peace,

Robert Lowry

A Letter to President Steve Hayner at CTS

Sometimes issue hit close to home.  A recent policy decision at my alma mater leaves me troubled that a seminary I care deeply about has adopted a policy I find both morally and theologically bankrupt.  Below is the letter I sent to the president expressing my thoughts.

23 April, 2012

Dr. Steve Hayner, President

Columbia Theological Seminary

701 S. Columbia Drive

Decatur, GA   30031

Dear Dr. Hayner:

It was with great distress that I learned today of the seminary’s decision concerning the continued policy of excluding same-gender couples from campus housing.   Let me say from the outset that I hold CTS in great affection and I am writing in that posture.  It is my sincere hope that, in the spirit of Christian fellowship, as an alumnus I may voice a firmly held disagreement with the seminary’s action without jettisoning a relationship that has meant a great deal to my life and ministry.   

As you note in your memo to the campus these are difficult issues in our denomination and the nature and role of same-gender relationships is and will continue to be a matter of deep theological discussion.  As a matter of polity, however, the church has spoken and determined that a universal policy concerning same-gender relationships in relation to those preparing for or entering into ministry is inappropriate.  The church has rejected any position that categorically discriminates against GLBTQ individuals or sets one group of God’s children apart for lesser treatment.  Although there is not universal agreement, the church has firmly staked its position on the principle that all of God’s children are to be treated with respect and dignity and that none should be set apart outside the community.  That the seminary has chosen to make an absolute policy against this principle on the basis of continued disagreement within the church is disappointing.  If disagreement on a question of human morality was determinative in seminary housing policy, our campuses would be rife with empty apartments.

Consider a hypothetical.  Abortion is an issue on which the PC(USA) has taken an ambiguous position and on which many within the church disagree.  As with the question of same-gender relationships, we are not of one mind as a church on the question of abortion.   If, after prayerful consideration, a student chose to abort a pregnancy, would that student be denied housing because there is not consensus in the church on the morality of that choice?  Shall a thrice divorced and remarried student be denied housing because a segment of the church may question that moral choice?  If that student’s life choice does not offend a divided church, how can the seminary legitimately say that two Christians in a loving and committed relationship do so offend merely because they share gender?  By allowing disagreement in the church on this single issue to dictate seminary policy, the institution implies that this particular issue and no other is dispositive. 

A neutral housing policy that treats no group different than another would reflect an ethic that CTS is a campus on which these disagreements may be openly discussed and debated by the whole church.  By adopting a housing policy that takes a stand on one issue and not others that divide the church, CTS cannot claim to be such a place of open and broad dialogue. How can the whole of the church live in open and honest engagement when a portion of the church is categorically excluded? 

It is my sincere hope that CTS will follow the example of Austin Seminary and create room within the educational community for all who would honestly come with open minds and willing intellect to grow and learn together.  That is the place of the seminaries and we are blessed as a church to have such excellent institutions of theological education in our tradition.  There is no other place in the church where the ethic of academic inquiry and the faithful theological life of the church so fully come into contact. 

I value deeply my time spent at Columbia.  My affection for the seminary continues unabated and I hope that in time my confidence may be restored.  I am,

Yours in Christ,

The Rev. Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

D.Min ‘10

Morality and the Federal Budget

Jesus said, "…come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me."

Jesus did not say, “…come you that have all that you need and more and inherit the kingdom; for I was hungry and you called me a freeloader, I was thirsty and you told me to fend for myself, I was naked and you called me too lazy to get a job, I was sick and you told me that to ensure that we all have healthcare would be to infringe on your God given freedom (even though nothing in scripture is written about your freedom of contract), I was in prison and you left me there.”

As the western world continues to slip ever deeper into the unholy alliance of government abdication to market forces and corrupt klepto-capitalism, society is becoming ever more capricious and callous in its attitudes toward the poor.  The result is a growing lack of moral imagination and the capacity to truly appreciate the needs and dreams of our neighbors and the dehumanizing force of market-centered morality.

In her compelling book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo paints a picture of life in a Mumbai slum that could fail to move only the most callous of hearts.  She explores the intricate reality of life in this sprawling area in the shadows of Mumbai’s airport and the growing luxury of the market driving class.  It is a moving human story that invites the reader to stand in the shoes of a resident in Annawadi and, for a moment of imagination in the pages of the book, know what it is to be cast aside in deference to “progress.”

Standing in stark contrast to Boo’s book is the budget recently passed in the House of Representatives.  An appalling breach of the social contract, the budget is more troublingly a giant step toward a society united not by a common bond of humanity but by the forces of the market. 

The implications of allowing the market to supplant our common humanity as the centering force of society are vast.  In a market driven society, an individual’s contribution to the Gross Domestic Product becomes the metric for that individual’s worth.  There is no inherent worth in the market, there is only assigned worth.  When the market becomes the centering principle of our society and our social morality, it becomes not only easy but acceptable to simply ignore the poor, undereducated, marginalized or anyone else deemed to lack value to the system. 

That Jesus’ message rejects this sort of market centered ethic is beyond question.  To make the claim that an Ayn Rand fueled Atlas Shrugged style individualism has any purchase in the word of God is bordering on the absurd.   Nonetheless, this is the central argument of the “market as morality” movement.  It is only, they say, when we respect the individual’s right to rise or fall all on their own that we can be truly free. 

How can the imprisonment of hunger, poverty or marginalization be free?!

The budget passed by the House is, nonetheless, rooted in this ethic.  It removes the generations old social safety net and replaces it with a glass walled abyss.  It declares that as a nation we will invest only in those people who offer some measurable return on our investment (i.e. millionaires get tax breaks because they supposedly create jobs but poor families get their SNAP food support cut because there is nothing to be gained by feeding them.)

Thankfully some voices from within the church have spoken up on the issue of our national budget and what it means for our common life.  The 54-page “Priorities for a Faithful Budget” http://faithfulbudget.org/files/2012/03/Priorities-for-a-Faithful-Budget1.pdf is a call to our leaders to put care for neighbor and respect for all as the central principle in the federal budget.  I am pleased that my own denomination’s leaders (in the PCUSA) have signed on to this document. 

A wise preacher once said, “you can tell a lot about a nation by the way it spends its money.”[i]  What will our nation’s budget say about us?  Will it reflect a common respect and care for the inherent value of humanity or will it reflect the growing ethic of a value-added humanity?  Will it reflect care for “the least of these” or underwriting the wealth of the few?  Will the centering principle be “we the people” or “me the person” and the radical individualism of klepto-capitalism?

This is one of those places where the three taboo topics of religion, politics and money intersect.  And this is no time for the church to yield to Emily Post politeness.  We, as the community of Christ, need to speak up for an ethic of care and respect and against the destructive and dehumanizing forces of market-centered morality.

Jesus stood in solidarity with all those whom society deemed without value.  As the body of Christ in the world, we, the church, must do the same whether in the slums of Annawadi or in the halls of power.

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[i] I do not recall who wrote the sermon from which this line comes.  If anyone knows who deserves the credit, please let me know and I will gladly make proper attribution.

Jesus Weeps

Note:  This particular blog entry pulls no punches.  Some recent news stories struck a nerve with me and this is one of the few issues on which I believe there is no legitimate “other side.”

Forget “Jesus wept.”  There is nothing past tense about the tears of Christ when it comes to the actions of some who claim faith in him as their excuse for wildly anti-Christian behavior.  Jesus weeps!

The latest outrage by the “Christian” hate group Focus on the Family is their nationwide assault on anti-bullying laws.  Over the last few years many states have, in the wake of a rash of teen suicides, begun treating bullying as what it is; a crime.  Laws, some very good and some in need of tweaking, have been enacted across the country to protect children and teens from the sort of bullying that goes beyond schoolyard pettiness. 

Now to be sure we are not talking here about normal childhood antics.   Always picking the smallest weakest kid last for the kick-ball team may not be nice but it is not what the anti-bullying statues are meant to cover.  These laws seek to address the persistent degrading of a peer in school or, as is becoming more common, on Facebook or other social media.  In one widely publicized case, a young teen girl was bullied about her weight on a social media site to the point that she could see no way to go on.  She took her own life.  Another young man who had bravely acknowledged his own sexual orientation to his family was hazed by peers and ignored by teachers and administrators to the point that he saw no recourse other than taking his own life.

Focus on the Family has taken up the cause of defending bullies in the name of religious freedom and, more specifically, in the name of Christ.  Their logic goes like this.  Homosexuality is wrong.  As “Christians” we are called to reject our GLBTQ peers, neighbors and family unless and until they “repent.”  To prohibit teenagers from treating GLBTQ peers in a demeaning way (screaming “fag” at them, painting pink triangles on their lockers, telling them being gay means you should die, etc.) is akin to prohibiting them of freely practicing their religious faith. Being a good Christian, according to this logic, means bullying children and teens whom you deem less than and is a moral and Christian imperative. In other words, anti-bullying laws stand in the way of faithful discipleship of Jesus Christ.

Like I said, Jesus weeps.

In their defense, these hate groups say that they are neither prejudiced nor intolerant of those unlike themselves.  They claim an ethic of “hate the sin but not the sinner.”  Not only is this not a biblical ideal, it betrays the very intolerance that these groups claim not to embrace. For whatever reason, this is the only “sin” they feel compelled to hate.  And it is protection of their hatred that is at the heart of this anti-anti-bullying movement.

These Christian hate groups are sprouting up across the nation and using the name of the Prince of Peace to promote an agenda that is as far from the gospel as the bottom of the sea is to the far side of the moon.  The gospel, at its heart, rejects the very sort of malignant logic that infects these hate groups.  At no point does Christ proclaim hatred or intolerance of ANYTHING to be a virtue.  A theology that devalues a child of God, especially one as vulnerable as a child or teen, who feels like an outsider already, does violence to the gospel.

Far from what these purveyors of a bastardized gospel would preach, I remain convinced that:

·         Anytime a child of God is belittled or has their humanity trampled upon, Jesus weeps.

·         Anytime a teenager, wonderfully made by God, is told that their life is not worth living, Jesus weeps.

·         Anytime a child of God is made to feel that they live outside the embrace of God’s love, Jesus weeps.

·         Anytime a community allows a child to be literally bullied to death, Jesus weeps.

·         Anytime the gospel is used to promote an agenda of hate, exclusion or, yes, bullying, Jesus weeps.

More and more anti-bullying laws are coming under attack by “Christian” hate groups and too many politicians, more concerned with preserving their seat of power than using that power for the public good, are caving to the demands of these hate mongers. 

We who understand the gospel of Jesus Christ as hope and not fear; love and not hate; promise and not persecution, must stand up and be counted.  There is no legitimate interpretation of the gospel that demands hate and intolerance.  That is not now nor has it ever been the message of Christ.

In this Holy Week, we are reminded that in our silence we are not free from guilt.

As long as we allow the gospel to be hijacked by these voices of intolerance and hatred, Jesus weeps.

You Just Don't Get It, Rick

In a campaign speech in Plano, Texas today, Rick Santorum claimed, “…progressives are trying to shutter faith, privatize it, push it out of the public square, oppress people of faith…”   On its face the statement is the worst kind of political rhetoric and a symptom of the divisive and petty nature of campaigns today.  Beneath the surface, Santorum’s rhetoric is far more dangerous. 

What Santorum is expressing is his disagreement with some public policy directions.  By calling disappointment in public policy “persecution,” he belittles the true suffering many Christians and other religious minorities around the world experience at the hands of their governments and neighbors.  Consider:

·         In America, conservative Christians disagree with recent administration policies on providing birth control.

·         In Egypt, a dozen Coptic Christians were murdered when leaving church because a Christian woman married a Muslim man.

·         In America, conservative Christians who disagree with the legalization of abortion voice their disapproval and campaign to change the law.

·         In Indonesia, churches in some communities have been ordered to close their doors and the pastors and members no longer speak publicly of their faith.

·         In America, Christians of many points of view disagree with the disproportionate amount of our national budget spent on the military.

·         In North Korea, Christian leaders are thrown into military concentration/work camps.

There is real suffering in this world.  Men, women and even children of many different faiths are persecuted and discriminated against and, in some cases, killed for no reason other than the fact that their faith is out of public favor.  The “suffering” of American Christians is nothing compared to the true suffering of religious minorities around the world.  Not getting your way is not the same thing as losing your life.

The very fact that Rick Santorum is free to say such foolish things while running for the highest elected office in the nation is elegant proof of just how hollow his rhetoric is.  If he really aspires to be the leader of the free world, Sen. Santorum would do well to take a moment and appreciate rather than complain about the very freedom he enjoys. 

As a pastor, I am grateful that I have the freedom to speak my mind in the pulpit each week.  My parishioners have the right to express their own faith lives without risk of persecution or prosecution.  Unlike many of my brothers and sisters around the world, my neighbors and I enjoy real and powerful freedom in our religious lives, even when we disagree with our fall out of favor with our government.

Christ was persecuted, Rick Santorum is just not getting his way.

Passion for Hope Not Hate

In late 1942, Joseph Goebbels lamented that the German people were doing an insufficient job of hating the English.  They listened to pirate English radio, accepted as truth English news reports and in general did a poor job of shunning the island neighbor and Allied opposition.  In an article in Das Reich, he went so far as to say that the war effort relied on Germans having enough contempt and hatred for the English.

In one of his German language broadcasts for the Office of War Information, theologian Paul Tillich encouraged the German people to resist hatred for the English and, while they were at it, to resist hatred for Hitler’s National Socialists as well.  That may seem an odd thing for a theologian so vehemently opposed to everything National Socialism would come to stand for in Germany and in history.  Nonetheless, Tillich tells his fellow Germans to resist “being just as the National Socialists want you to be, servants of hatred.”  When we hate as they hate, Tillich said, “we are identical to them to the degree to which you permit yourselves to hate them.”[i]

Those words and that sentiment were broadcast over an official United States government radio service during wartime.

Imagine a theologian, even one of Tillich’s profile and popularity attempting to broadcast into Afghanistan or Iraq or Iran a message similar to the one he shared with the German people seventy years ago.

He wouldn’t make it into the studio much less on the air!

We live in a time when the dominant political chorus is one of division and hate.   A time when your credentials as a citizen are measured not in devotion to the principles of the nation but your vocal hatred of a religious minority or an unpopular population.   Ours is a time when what you believe is far less important than what you reject; when we are defined by what divides rather than what unites.  Because, the chorus goes, if we don’t hate and reject them deeply and harshly enough, then they might just win.  Liberal or conservative, right wing or left wing, the chorus demands that we each take a side and, in taking it, hate the other whatever that other might be.

What Tillich reminded the German people, what he might yet remind us, is that hate can create nothing great, it can only destroy.  Hate leaves only emptiness.  It is passion that builds and passion that leaves hope in its wake. 

Yes, there are institutions and powers and principalities in the world today that demand our resistance.  But as followers of the passion of Christ, the passion of salvation, our goal must not be to defeat something hated but redeem something lost.  It is no coincidence that Hitler went after the church early in his evil rule.  He knew what we too often forget, that the antidote to the institutions of hate in the world is to relentlessly resist them with grace, hope and peace.  It was the light of that grace that Goebbels so feared and it is that same grace that the world needs to hear today.

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[i] Paul Tillich “How One Should View the Enemy” OWI Broadcast September 12, 1942

Say a litle prayer for me

Last week was the occasion for the annual National Prayer Breakfast.    Hosted in Washington D.C., the event has become a fixture on the DC social and power calendar.  President Obama continued a tradition that dates back to Eisenhower and spoke the gathered clergy and guests.

I am of two minds about the National Prayer Breakfast.  On the one hand, I think it is a good thing for religious leaders to show that we are concerned with issues of policy and politics.  And on occasion, the breakfast has been an opportunity for speaking truth to power (think Mark Hatfield berating Nixon and Kissinger for the sin of the Vietnam War.)  I am a firm believer in Jefferson’s “wall of separation” between church and state.  The point is to keep one from dominating the other and not to prevent the vocabularies of faith and citizenship from mingling in the same minds.

Then there is the other hand.  The National Prayer breakfast has, over time, devolved to a carefully vetted event peopled by like-minded “leaders” of the church.   The Fellowship Foundation continues to act as host of the gathering.   By most accounts, the Fellowship is a group of mostly evangelical social conservatives.  Because the group is so secretive it is difficult to know who exactly pulls the strings, but whoever they are they can get the President of the United States to show up every year. 

That is power.  And power rarely speaks truth to itself.

There is no religious test for citizenship in the United States.  However, there is a growing de facto litmus test measuring the adequacy of faith’s patriotism.  Through events like the National Prayer Breakfast, the doctrine of American Exceptionalism is celebrated and the power elite clothe themselves in the mantle of religious legitimacy.  

In a time when there is a great deal that the church should be saying to the powers of society,  it borders on the offensive that instead of standing up for the poor, outcast, excluded and downtrodden, these “church leaders” instead sat down and broke bread with those same powers.  Where were the poor?  Where were the foreigners living in our lands?  Where were the prisoners?  Where were the hungry, the thirsty, the suffering and the sick?  These are the people Jesus broke bread with.

Next year, on the first Thursday in February, there needs to be a real National Prayer Breakfast.  Our churches should fling wide their doors and break bread with whomever will come.  The table of fellowship should not be an invitation only table and prayer should not be reserved for the well-heeled and well-connected.